Tkinter Tutorial - Scrollbar

1. Tkinter ScrollBar
2. Tkinter Horizontal Scrollbar

The Tkinter Scrollbar widget is normally used to scroll widgets like ListBox, Text or Canvas vertically, or Entry horizontally. It shows a slider in the right position.

Tkinter ScrollBar

import tkinter as tk

class Scrollbar_Example:
    def __init__(self):
        self.window = tk.Tk()

        self.scrollbar = tk.Scrollbar(self.window)
        self.scrollbar.pack(side="right", fill="y")

        self.listbox = tk.Listbox(self.window, yscrollcommand=self.scrollbar.set)
        for i in range(100):
            self.listbox.insert("end", str(i))
        self.listbox.pack(side="left", fill="both")

        self.scrollbar.config(command=self.listbox.yview)

        self.window.mainloop()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = Scrollbar_Example()  

self.scrollbar = tk.Scrollbar(self.window)

It initiates the Scrollbar instance.

self.listbox = tk.Listbox(self.window, yscrollcommand=self.scrollbar.set)
.
.
self.scrollbar.config(command=self.listbox.yview)

We need configure both Listbox and Scrollbar to connect them together correctly.

1. Set yscrollcommand callback to set of Scrollbar. yscrollcommand is scrollable widgets’ option that is controlled by a scrollbar, and is used to communicted with vertical scrollbars.
2. Set command of the Scrollbar to the yview of the Listbox. When the user moves the slider of Scrollbar, it calls the yview method with the proper argument.

Tkinter Horizontal Scrollbar

The horizontal scroll bar is used to scroll the widgets like Text and Entry in the horizontal orientation.

import tkinter as tk

class Scrollbar_Example:
    def __init__(self):
        self.window = tk.Tk()

        self.scrollbar = tk.Scrollbar(self.window, orient=tk.HORIZONTAL)
        self.scrollbar.pack(side="bottom", fill="x")

        self.text = tk.Text(self.window,
                            wrap = "none",
                            xscrollcommand=self.scrollbar.set)
        
        self.text.insert("end", str(dir(tk.Scrollbar)))
        self.text.pack(side="top", fill="x")

        self.scrollbar.config(command=self.text.xview)

        self.window.mainloop()


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app = Scrollbar_Example()  

self.scrollbar = tk.Scrollbar(self.window, orient=tk.HORIZONTAL)

It initiates a horizontal scroll bar by specifying the orient to be HORIZONTAL.

self.text = tk.Text(self.window,
                            wrap = "none",
                            xscrollcommand=self.scrollbar.set)

To scroll the text horizontally, we need to set xscrollcommand to the set method of the Scrollbar, but not yscrollcommand as in the above example.

self.scrollbar.config(command=self.text.xview)

Correspondingly, the callback of the horizontal scroll bar should be connected with the xview method but not yview.